Bodily functions

It's a little past 2:00AM and I hear a beeping noise. It wakes me up and I lay in my cot, waiting for it to beep over and over again till I am sure of it. That it wasn't my imagination playing tricks on me.

Yes, the song is running through my mind right now as I write this post.

I get out of the cot and located the source of the beep. It was my mom's IV beeping. The morphine was empty according to machine display. I looked at empty bottle confirming that fact. Then wondered why the hell there wasn't someone coming in the room to take care of it?

I step out of the room and go towards the nurse station. I see the nurse that is assigned to my mom enter another room. Seeing another nurse looking at a Facebook page, I notify her of the situation. She just informs the other nurse to take care of it.

What happened to pride the work? If that other nurse is working and you are looking at Facebook, then someone comes out and tells you the problem, I expect you to do something about it, not pass it off on the nurse already busy.

So I head back into the room and wait for the nurse to bring more Morphine. The new bottle was started on the IV and we notice a smell. My mom had some shit come out.

It wasn't a lot, but I was surprised to see it. As part of the pre-death process, my mom was no longer given any food or water. Just pain medication to ease any pain. We're letting her body break down.

This is supposed to be more humane, since her body can no longer process any food. The machine is breaking down department by department, section by section.

I help the nurse clean my mom and change the pad she is laying on. I wonder how much time is left. How much longer do we have here. If the nurse wasn't here, I would be screaming right now, because if my mom wasn't dying, what we're doing to her would certainly kill her.

I try to go back to sleep listening to the faint wheeze of my mom's breath.

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